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"Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich."
There is more than enough wealth in any nation and in the world in general to feed, provide health care, even education, shelter and opportunities to every living person on the planet. The problem is not a lack of resources or even limited resources ... it's an imbalance of power and wealth. A small group of individuals own and control everything while the rest of us struggle to maintain the little we have and a good number of us don't even have that.
This isn't a call to revolution or to ask everyone to violently swing to the complete opposite of the political spectrum. We have to create a world and society that is more balanced and equitable to everyone, everywhere .... the poor have to be brought up to living standard that respects their lives and the ultra wealthy have to be brought down to earth to share the excesses they will never use or enjoy.
Education and wealth is known to lower population growth so there is no need to fear monger everyone into believing that we will eat the planet dry if everyone is able to afford a hamburger.
Think of the possibilities of humanity if everyone had an equal (or least a decent) chance of an education and to explore their potential? What do you think would happen to the world if we filled it with doctors, engineers, scientists, researchers, academics, professionals of all kinds of fields? Instead of trying to figure out how to build bigger more destructive, creative and terrible bombs or killing machines ... we'd be building space stations to travel and colonize a planet or harness the power of the sun directly.
We have the potential but we keep getting held back by a small group of people who want to own the entire planet during our short inconsequential lives while the majority of us just accept that as completely acceptable and normal.
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"Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich."
That's a good quote. Who is it from?
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I wondered about that too when I first saw it a year or so ago.
But apparently it's an anonymous internet comment.
https://medium.com/incendiary/poverty-exists-because-the-rich-cannot-be-satisfied-c65a6119ab69
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Ditto, fuck me that goes hard
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Forcing someone out of lifesaving healthcare and shooting someone in the back is functionally the same thing. When one of those things happens once, and the other happens constantly every day, we gotta consider the two relative to each other: Brian Thompson was more violent than his killer thousands-fold. The killer's act doesn't even amount to a rounding error in contrast to Thompson's. Any posts stating support for health insurance CEOs or decrying their forceful deposition is advocating for violence and should be reported immediately for its clear violation of Lemmy's TOS.
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Lemmy's TOS.
i don’t disagree with the sentiment, but this isn’t how the fediverse works
that might seem like a trivial critique, but it’s important because the structure we create for dealing with these issues can be far more diverse and human-focused than corporate TOS if we forget those terms and build back better
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So, basically social murder (cw: natopedia)
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"There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."
- Warren Buffett
I mean... they're quite open about it.
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I figured I'd dig a bit and find the source. It's from a 2006 NYT article. Here's the quote in context:
It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”
Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
This quote is nominally about the ruling class manipulating the state for their own benefits. However, I don't think he would do away with class as a Marxist revolution would. Rather, he thinks class warfare would end when the rich are taxed a proportion equal to the working class. The state would still exist in service of the bourgeois, ownership of the means of production would still be theirs, and society would still be shaped by them.
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It's always been a class war. The billionaires have been using the news media they own to keep us from figuring out where the REAL source of our pain comes from.
If they can keep us distracted with bullshit and fighting among ourselves, then they can keep running off with all the f*cking money.
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That's why I made an introductory Marxist reading list, without theory people have a general idea of who the big bad is but no way to combat that, and in doing so leftist infighting becomes one of the principle issues.
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What an interesting thing to observe. The United States health insurance system is such a complete f****** disaster, and a great many Americans know that, but many of those Americans also feel that the US is the best country in the world. So there is this cognitive dissonance where people are angry but some still won't admit that maybe Canada and the UK and Japan and dozens of other countries are all doing it better.
And if you're unwilling to recognize a systemic failure, then maybe the best you can do is hope for a hero or at least some kind of vigilante warrior to come along and dispense justice or karma or whatever you want to call it.
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That's because conservatives are very individualistic for whatever reason. Instead of seeing systemic issues they see bad apples.
They don't see health insurance as a flawed concept that is made to exploit them, they see it as a system that got corrupted by the "elite" (aka the Jews, probably)
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That's because conservatives are very individualistic for whatever reason. Instead of seeing systemic issues they see bad apples.
Because conservatism inherently relies on fear of change, simple thinking, and avoiding the discomfort of questioning the status quo at all costs. You want to believe that everything is hunky-dory the way it is, and avoid thinking too hard about all the ways it might not be.
It's uncomfortable to think that the system you're participating in and benefitting from might be the cause of it. No one ever wants to think they're the bad guy. It's the reason they hate stuff like CRT so much, because it's an incredibly uncomfortable thought to imagine that everything they've known and tried to maintain is actually a complete nightmare and they've been part of it in some way.
The world is much scarier when you see the pain and suffering so many experience, and it's through no fault of their own. No matter what they do or didn't do, some people just get dealt a shit hand, either by chance, or because of systemic issues. It's much easier to say "The system I believe in is totally fine and just, it's their fault they haven't been able to reach the same place I have".
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Canada and the UK and Japan and dozens of other countries are all doing it better.
Propaganda has that one covered:
"There are people in Canada that wait months and months to see a doctor for serious problems!"
It's the most common thing I hear when I discuss healthcare with anyone... "But the waittttssss!"
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But reality has the response covered:
Many European countries has a max wait time of 90 days for non-emergency elective surgery. If the wait is longer than that at a public hospital, the patient can choose to have the surgery done at a private hospital if there's room at no additional cost. Emergencies are always treated immediately, of course. You can also choose to have a private top-up health insurance plan if you wish to always be treated at private hospitals.
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It's a digital garden, baby.
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Grow, my little digital creation, GROW!
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Who the fuck is Brian Thompson?? Let's just go ahead and keep saying "the CEO" agreed?
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Agreed. Who cares which CEO? They're all garbage humans.
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Don't worry, mine's been growing and blooming for years. Hopefully, I can help others' seeds grow as well.
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Execs are tyrants, and we have an amendment in mind for that.
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Execs are not tyrants, they are lap dogs of the owner class...
This just a dead officer within the cartel structure, the Don is still winning and this a small price to lay for him to find out that we have him.
Owners will adjust and working class gloating will face retaliation.
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The execs take perverse delight in the ways they rob the workers of their wealth, make them suffer, and leave them to die. They are cruel and oppressive. They aren't simply lap dogs, and not all of then are beholden to hire ups. Many of them like Bezos and Musk are the ones in charge.
If you work at a company, did you elect the execs of that company? Do you have any way within the system of the company to hold said execs in check when they abuse their power? Did you vote for the pay scale of the company? Did you vote on benefits packages?
The answer to all these is almost certainly no. The execs are the business equivalent of dictators. They are tyrants, even if "benevolent" or controlled by a higher up tyrant.
And we see the same thing happen on a country level on the world stage. Big powers will topple or influence small countries and install a dictator that is beholden to the big power. That doesn't make the dictator any less of a dictator just because they themselves are owned.
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To take advantage of this seed, I made an introductory Marxist reading list. Without learning theory, there can be no real revolutionary movement that doesn't stumble over countless avoidable pitfalls.
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Very noble, thank you.
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No problem! 🫡
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takes seed and gives it a single gentle kiss
then plants it in the rainforest I'm growing under my house
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...it just sounds like you kissed your phone and then flushed it down the toilet into the septic tank....
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I’m glad we’re shifting from the culture wars the PTB want us distracted by and focusing on the real problem.
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And that seed grew and bloomed into...
1-star reviews for a McDonalds in Pennsylvania -
That's all well and good, but don't just sit back and hope that healthcare magically improves, or that other healthcare CEO's start getting their life claims denied.
Take the current well of anger, and point it towards politicians that will actually fight for free healthcare. It's not only a public health emergency, but also a "crime" emergency, and one of safety.
It's easy to sit behind a keyboard and laugh. It's slightly harder to sit behind a keyboard and email your local reps. It's again slightly harder to rally at your local reps office hours or town halls for free healthcare.
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Nah let's shoot more CEOs. Let's frighten the fuck out of executives until they bend to our wills.
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And how will that help those that are struggling with healthcare costs? Frankly, I'm shocked it's taken this long for America to shoot the shit out of these cunts, but you've shot one dude - and a new CEO is probably rubbing their hands with glee with replacing them and getting that big fat bonus.
Make the change that will help people, rather than the one that satisfies your exec-level death kink.
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Neither adventurism nor reformism works, what does work is revolution, which requires organization.
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This reminds me of the murder of the doctor that would do late term abortions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_George_Tiller
but instead of abortion it is about health insurance
that is what this whole thing reminds me of ... anti-abortion people blowing up planned parenthoods and claiming moral victory because they saw no other way.
fucking gross.
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Well if I were to argue devil's advocate, they did get abortion banned in many states so it turned out to be MORE than a moral victory. Fear causes changes in society. They did it and it worked.....hmmm so you are saying.......
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Like that seed won't grow and wrap itself around those that will use it for personal gain instead of class warfare.
I'm tired of warning people of the poisoned seeds. But you will reap what you sow.
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What do you mean?
The seed of capitalism and the greed of the few has wrapped itself around the necks of society.
Are you proposing a seed of fear or resistance or anger against that system is worse than the tree that is suffocating us?
I hope those who’ve wronged the majority of humanity will reap what they sow in equal measure.
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Imagine being this confidently incorrect
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This is so vague it is useless...
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How is any recognition of a real thing a poisoned seed?
What do you mean without metaphors?
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